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Sins Everlasting
approaches a section of Sins Everlasting.]]A massive conglomeration of twisted ships' hulls that plies both realspace and the warp, Sins Everlasting is a space hulk of titanic proportions. This ancient coagulation of metal intermittently fluctuates between the warp and realspace, and the currents of the empyrean mean that some of these transitions are regular in both time and location. During its journeys through the warp it picks up yet more & more drifting hulls lost in the empyrean, and the foul powers of the warp infest the hulk and assail and pour souls trapped within. When it transitions back into realspace however the daemons & warp creatures are bled to a hundredth of their power, and mortal explorers board the incalculably old vessel in search of ancient treasures, plunder, and glory. Appearence While most space hulks consist of perhaps a dozen or so vessels crushed together, Sins Everlasting is one of the few truly gargantuan hulks that carve great furrows through the warp and sweet detritus away from large swathes of the empyrean. Measuring around 2400 kilometres long but constantly shifting, Sins Everlasting takes an uneven tubular shape around 200km in diameter at the widest points - though this can vary drastically due to large fissures, chasms, and gaps in the hulk's surface. The hulk consists of thousands of twisted hulls and even solid asteroids, and a constant stream of shed detritus drifts in its wake. Every transition through the warp will see new hulls added to its surface as others may fall apart and break away completely, ensuring that Sins Everlasting is never quite the same across each reappearence. The twisted behemoth of blackened metal and tortured framework is almost evil to behold, and is far too large for any single faction to ever commandeer in its entirety - as can be the case with smaller ~50km space hulks that are often taken over by Ork or Chaos warbands. Migration Sins Everlasting is propelled very slowly through realspace by sheer momentum and the occassional plasma drive burst or explosive hull breach. In the warp however it is carried through shifting currents and roiling storms, and hurled around the empyrean as other currents draw drifting & lost hulls towards it to join the titanic graveyard. The hulk's transitions to and from realspace are poorly understood, but it is assumed that the hulk shifts into the warp due to a simultaneous activation of hundreds of malfunctioning warp drives across the conglomeration. Whether this is purely coincidental, a natural chain reaction, or caused by outside influence is unknown. Eventually these warp drives start burning out & shutting down for whatever reason, and when there are too few left functioning the hulk is hurled back into realspace - spat out by a warp that is offended by its lumbering mass of reality. The actual mechanism of Sins Everlasting's transition to and from the warp is a tremendous thing to behold. A colossal portal into the warp tears apart the fabric of realspace across a region of empty space at least 1000km across, and any starships caught near this tumultuous fracture are invariably ripped to shreds. Essentially a small, brief warpstorm, just being in the same system as this transition is known to cause warp tremors and minor warp phenomena in psykers, and severely affects the warpsight of Navigators for some time. From this roiling storm of pure warp the leviathan of Sins Everlasting is spat-out or sucked-in, before the portal collapses and reality reigns once again. It is typically in regions of calmer warp that the hulk tears back into realspace - its transdimensional momentum smashing straight through the borders of reality and the warp. Therefore t here are a few locations where Sins Everlasting makes regular reappearences in realspace, drifting through thwse systems before its warp drives spark once more. Many of these systems are well known for playing hose to Sins Everlasting multiple times: *'Greed's Folly' - An uninhabited waypoint system in Sector Deus. Sins Everlasting appears here every Terran year for roughly the same six week period. *'Cheti-A9' - An empty waypoint system between Sector Deus and Sector Morrux. Sins Everlasting appears here for exactly the same three days every year, and Navigated vessels take the opportuinity to travel in its warp-wake and cut their remaining inter-sector journey in half. *'Damnation' - An empty system on the border of Sector Morrux. Sins Everlasting spends around four weeks here each year but transitions into the Warp for one realspace week in the middle (though time experienced on board fluctuates wildly). If they want to reach the deepest treasures, explorers must endure the time at warp - often by locating a still-functioning geller field inside the hulk. *'Umultox Prime' - Imperial Hive World system in Sector Morrux. Sins Everlasting has appeared in this system twice before at irregular intervals in M38 and M40. Each time the hulk's foul denizens brought havoc & destruction to Umultox Prime and its vassal planets. *'Saramar' - A system near the coreward edge of the Eye of Terror. This is the furthest away from Demi-Segmentum Obscurus-3b that Sins Everlasting has ever been sighted. Interior The insides of Sins Everlasting are an ever-shifting labyrinth of crushed hulls and sheared vessels. While emergency bulkheads and persisting life sustainers preserve atmosphere in many regions, the hulk's sheer mass and the power of its enormous collection of grav-plates and other artificial gravity generators means it retains an atmosphere of its own. Naturally vast swathes of the ship where these plates are weaker and the hull is open to the void are total vacuums, and the twisted conglomeration's interior is rife with yawning chasms & gaps in the three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle of starship hulls. Coupled with the fact that the constant pressure between these hulls means that passages & routes can collapse or shift at any time, simply traversing Sins Everlasting is extremely dangerous. It is all too easy to get lose within the vast hulk as gravity shifts, passages twist, and signals of any kind fail to penetrate its adamantium depths. Even the most secure pathways are typically shrouded or lit by only flickering & malfunctioning lighting. Ancient detritus can litter these passages including chemical leaks, dripping fluid lines, and the rotting corpses & skeletons of the vessel's original crew. Ancient servitors and other automated machinery may still be functioning, bumping around in the dark with a mechanical whirr of servos. An bulkhead may unexpectedly slam shut right on top of an unfortunate explorer, or automated defences coated in dust and rust may attack without warning. The environment inside can be rendered even more inhospitable by malfunctioning machinery. Coolant leaks create regions of extreme cold. Smouldering reactors create regions of extreme heat. Malfunctioning air purifiers & furnaces fill entire compartments with poisonous and/or corrosive gasses. Finally, flickering warp drives & persisting warp taint damage the grasp of reality itself in places, causing minor warp phenomena that challenge even the most stalwart minds. As a general rule, the deeper into the hulk one travels the stronger the taint of the warp. Inhabitants While the ships that make up Sins Everlasting may be virtually dead, the hulk itself is far from it. Foul creatures including mutants, Xenos, and the warp-spawned can be found aboard Sins Everlasting, and even the non-warp creatures could be heavily tainted if they fail to find refuge within a functioning geller field before the hulk moves into the warp. For all the dangers posed by Sins Everlasting's structure & environment, these pale in comparison to the lethality of the Hulk's denizens. Countless millions of these barbaric, bestial, and purely evil creatures dwell within the depths of Sins Everlasting. Just some of the creatures sighted aboard Sins Everlasting rank amongst the foulest creatures in existence, and while larger exploration parties may be able to cover more ground and defend themsleves better, they risk awakening a hornets' nest of the most lethal beasts imaginable. This list is by no means exhaustive, but all have been sighted multiple times in various places aboard Sins Everlasting - indicating their frequency: 'Mutants' Packs & tribes of twisted Hullghasts and other degenerated, mutated former-humans are a frequent encounter in Sins Everlasting's surface regions. Twisted in form and bestial in intelligence, these mutants are the descendants of ship crews & voidfarers lost at warp, whose vessels were drawn to Sins Everlasting. Mutants are often numerous and sport twisted appendages like claws and fangs, and are notorious for sneaking & ambushing prey from air ducts & maintenance channels. Fortunately they tend to be fairly frail and easily killed by a few good bullets - usually. 'Insane & Stranded' Whether they be lost explorers or unfortunate voidfarers caught by the hulk, few humans (or sapients of other species, for that matter) that are trapped aboard Sins Everlasting can retain their sanity for long as warp-spawned whispers & hallucinations plague their every moment. Typically uncommon to come across as they rarely survive long, their paranoid & delusional nature makes them hard to predict and they may be heavily armed, posing a risk to anyone & everyone. 'Orks' The plague on the face of the galaxy. Many Orks have found their way into Sins Everlasting or have grown from spores left behind. These legendarily resilient creatures endure and even thrive in the hulk's depths, forming tribes and mobs that defend 'their turf' (typically an area around a functioning geller field) viciously. While they are found deeper into the hulk than mutants, they still tend to be too afraid to live near the core with its warp phenomena. If they can secure or build the necessary craft, Orks leave Sins Everlasting too. Often attacking the nearest exploring vessel or havited world with all the might they can bring to bear. 'Genestealers' This foul Xenos race is notorious for establishing thriving hives aboard space hulks, and Sins Everlasting is no different. Multiple Genestealer hives are thought to exist across Sins Everlasting and while the vast majority of any given hive will be hibernating at any given time there will always be a few of the hyper-lethal creatures stalking the hulk silently in search of prey to implant and bring to their hive, swelling their numbers over centuries. Thus the largest hives are tens of thousands strong, and should any explorers be foolish or recklass enough to awake asn entire hive, a vast region of the hulk will swarm with these apex predators. Intriguingly, Genestealers seem totally unaffected by the warp and have no need to seek out a geller field within which to hibernate. Only on very few occasions have these hives awoken themselves deliberately, and have always only done this when Sins Everlasting has emerged into a habited system. The Genestealers swarm into saviour pods or take over boarders' vessels and crash onto habited worlds however they can and no matter how many are killed in the process. This is how an entire hive city on Umultox Prime was completely destroyed by genestealers when Sins Everlasting appeared in their system in M40. 'Bestial Xenos' All kinds of unpleasant beasts have found their way into the dark crevices of Sins Everlasting - or evolved within its depths themselves. Giant insectoids, ultra-venemous bugs, ripper swarms, wild grox, ambulls, and more have been sighted within Sins Everlasting - often heavily tainted by the warp despite their instincts driving them to seek out geller field bubbles. Naturally these creatures vary imensely in temperament & lethality, but all are dangerous in at least some way or they would not have survived aboard this cursed hulk. 'Other Explorers' There is no honour amongst thieves, and no guarantee that any other group exploring the hulk will not eagerly kill another to claim what they have already looted. Human explorers are often Imperials (though this is no guarantee of non-aggression) but many may have non-Imperial origins or could even be outlaws such as pirates or heretics. Inhuman explorers are a rarer sight, but far from unheard of. Eldar, Ork, Kroot, Tarellian, Q'Orl, Cygnoid, Xo'nad, and Rak'Gol parties have been sighted within Sins Everlasting, and while many have no interest in tangling with other explorers some will gleefully attack. 'Warp Creatures' The roiling empyrean is home to many creatures aside from daemons. Whilst they may live in the warp and be unharmed by its energies - and often exhibit reality bending abilities themselves - they are not formed from sapients' emotions or alligned to a chaos deity and are more comparable to wild animals than daemons. Warp Creatures come in many shapes, sizes, and abilities and vary dramatically in aggression & intelligence. However the vast majority are hostile to realspace life in some way. From the serpentine Rakasya to the woflish Astral Hounds & Kymeras, many of these creatures are simply stupid & hostile beasts that attack with warp-hardened claws & teeth and often use otherworldly abilities such as short-range teleportation and farsight. Others are more disturbing such as the phase-shifting Psychneuein - a giant warp wasp that lays eggs in the brains of living psykers and can move out-of-phase with the materium at will. Perhaps the most dangerous warp creature is the Enslaver - a large floating tentacled orb that can control the minds of entire populations if given free reign. Other warp creatures are not quire so feral or mindlessly aggressive, and they are arguably more dangerous for it. Amongst these beings are the polymorphic Vampires, the parastic & empathic Medusae, the cunning Debtweavers that feed off the emotions of roping sapients into faustian bargains, the seemingly beautiful Syrens that lure their prey before feasting, and the generally harmless Leechers that feed off residual emotions through proximity to mortal sapients. Many of these sapient warp creatures feed off emotions & spirits in some way, and often use their intelligence & ability to interact more directly with realspace sapients to get it - for example by negotiating and allying with some to take advantage of others. However they themselves are not formed of pure sapients' emotions, nor do they embody any single aspect of any of the Chaos Gods. Thus they are not daemons and often do not have the same insanity-inducing effects or inherent hatred towards all life (though they are almost always indifferent to it). Regardless they are still warp-spawned and often hostile to human life, and are heavily persecuted by the Imperium to a degree exceeding Xenos but not quite as severely as true daemons - mostly. 'Heretics' As a den of Chaos taint, Sins Everlasting is a natural refuge for those who worship the Chaos Gods. Not only mortal cultists but even Chaos Astartes can be found in the deepest and most tainted depths of Sins Everlasting, holed up in converted strongholds & dens of varying sizes. From their nomadic home these cults & warbands launch raids on each other, the Hulk's other inhabitants, unfortunate explorers, or even - if they possess appropriate craft - other starships & planets in the system they find themselves in. Perhaps the most remarkable example of this was in 707.M40 when - whilst in Greed's Folly - an astartes warband from Sins Everlasting boarded & claimed an explorer's light cruiser and fired upon nearby vessels as they held position around the hulk, inflicting massive damage before they were put down by a nearby Navy cruiser. Encountering heretics within a space hulk is often a double-edged sword. Should the cult be vast in size and/or commanded by Chaos Astartes they could easily wipe out a party of explorers, but if the heretics can be defeated their stronghold can be plundered for treasures that they themselves have already gathered from the hulk. 'Daemons' The foulest of all the denizens of Sins Everlasting, daemons of the Chaos Gods infest every corner of the hulk whilst it is at warp - save for the bubbles of functioning geller field protection dotted across the conglomeration. When in realspace daemons can only retain form in the deepest, oldest, and most tainted regions of Sins Everlasting - though flickering warp drives have also been known to summon them forth as have the rituals of on-board cultists. Utterly hostile to all life and notoriously lethal & mentally traumatising to behold, Chaos Daemons are the most dreaded inhabitants of Sins Everlasting. Treasures With arguably the most dangerous environment imaginable stacked against them one may wonder what compels anyone to dare venture into the depths of Sins Everlasting. So ancient & vast is Sins Everlasting that it contains deep within its bowels treasures beyond reckoning. Amongst the thousands of twisted worthless merchant tradeships are Naval Battlecruisers, Great Crusade-era warships, and even long lost relics from the Dark Age of Technology, just waiting to be found and their treasures plundered. Ancient weapons, devices, ornaments & other valable loot spanning over 10,000 years of history can be found within this dark conglomeration, a sore temptation for even the most sensible minds. Not just human treasures are here either, for the Xenos craft scattered around Sins Everlasting can hold secrets & loot of their own and certain xenotech can be immensely valuable. The ships themselves aren't the only things that may have carried rare & valuable objects with them. The corpses of long dead explorers can yield treasures of their own, and many have gone missing - presumed dead - aboard Sins Everlasting over the millennia including Rogue Traders, Inquisitors, and even Astartes. To say nothing of the potent alien technologies that can be looted from dead Xenos explorers too. Many of the creatures found aboard Sins Everlasting can also have significant value. Genestealer chitin and Ambull teeth can fetch high prices, and more illegal substances such as ground Khymera bone and warp dust can themselves be extremely valuable. They can fetch even higher prices if successfully caught alive, and many dedicated trappers foray into Sins Everlasting to capture the most dangerous & valuable beasts to sell to collectors and fighting arenas. The final component of Sins Everlasting's value are the hulks and starship components from which it is made. Each transition back to realspace reveals a new surface of fresh hulls swept from the empyrean and old ones exposed by shed debris. While the vast majority of these hulls are broken beyond repair a precious few can still be salvaged, and many salvage specialists scan as much of Sins Everlasting's surface as they can in search of intact hulls to recover. Of these scant few salvageable wrecks most are simple transport ships, but on very rare occasions a warship or even a capital ship may be reclaimed from Sins Everlasting - and they may well be ancient & potent vessels of tremendous power. Much more common however is not the salvage of entire hulls but multiple starship components; functioning weapons & other sections reclaimed from shattered hulls. Again some of these components could come from very old and/or large vessels, making them very valuable. The potential earnings from an expedition into Sins Everlasting can propel a nobody to fantastic wealth, making it obvious why the disparate, power-hungry, desperate, and/or glory seeking continue to perish within this damned hulk. Some of the more significant items recovered from Sins Everlasting are listed here: *''Blade of Vengeance'' - A Dauntless-class Light Cruiser with extremely powerful archeotech drive systems. She weas reclaimed from Sins Everlasting's surface by Rogue Trader Embry Chay in 662.M41 who sold it to the Imperial Navy (though he was given little choice). *'Angel's Judgement' - This Great Crusade-era Astartes Thunder Hammer is a relic of the Dark Angels and was recovered from Sins Everlasting by the Silent Guardians Astartes Chapter. *'Halo Eternal' - This potent archeotech forcefield is capable of turning aside any attack in a tremendous flash of divine light that burns & banishes the warp-spawned. It was recovered from Sins Everlasting by an unknown Chartist Captain but is currently possessed & utilised by Lord Inquisitor Harkon Braulasz of the Ordo Malleus. *'The Colossus' - This magnificent Dark Age statue is seemingly formed of solid, indestructible marble yet periodically - and seemingly magically - morphs into a variety of ornate forms ranging from a giant eagle to an enormous tree. It is currently installed in the centre of the entrance plaza of the Sector Palace on Tachion Primaris, and most often takes the form of an idealised human man over 100 feet tall. Category:Subsector Adamantis Category:Space Hulk